


To Take the Blame

by Driehoek



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Kingsman: The Secret Service, it actually takes place in 1998
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-17 16:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14835459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Driehoek/pseuds/Driehoek
Summary: It had all started with Iraq, of course it had. He had thought he could handle the responsibility of taking two candidate agents with him on a mission, and he indeed could. That was, up until the exact moment he had overlooked that bloody grenade. Now, he figures he has no choice but to keep running from his emotions, but guilt is an accomplished hunter.





	1. Mirrors

Time had moved on excruciatingly slowly during the past month. It was January now. The time of year where everyone tried to drown out the emerging darkness that the short days inevitably brought, was long gone, and so were the decorative lights around town. Everything had once again returned to its usual dark and miserable state.

Harry Hart usually wasn’t the type to join the unfortunate men sitting at the bar of the Woodsmen Arms pub near his house, but he figured recent events gave him a pass to investigate what made sitting at a bar amongst complete strangers so enticing when one was in a less than favourable state of mind.

He had already found the answer after one night: there was no consolation to be found at the bottom of a glass of wine, not any more so than the same amount of alcohol would’ve given him in the privacy of his own home. Yet this way, he was certain it wasn’t the lack of living souls in his vicinity that had him feeling dreary. At least the alcohol numbed his senses enough to not care about the fact that he _very much_ did not look like a gentleman at this moment.

Immediately upon arrival the cuffs of his shirt had been stained by the puddles of beer on the wooden planks of the bar, when he rested his arms on it. His shirt was tailored, and he had had it steam cleaned only yesterday. He had recoiled instinctively upon noticing he stained his shirt, which had earned him an amused look from the bartender. He had rolled up his sleeves for the time being, wondering why he didn’t just go back home instead of subjecting himself to the torture of a crowded pub on a Saturday night. It was so… unlike him.

There was a mirror on the wall behind the counter, it almost seemed to be placed there out of some kind of sadistic humour he didn’t quite understand, as if whoever placed it there wanted the pub’s visitors to see their own miserable reflections, but that was complete rubbish. Most of the pub’s visitors were not miserable, quite the opposite, they seemed to be enjoying the company they were in. They were just very, very obnoxious, mostly because they reminded him that he was a decade or two too old to belong there.

Harry loosened his tie, which had been sitting uncomfortably tight around his neck in the humid, stuffy air of the pub, silently thanking himself for the wise decision not to bring his jacket or any coat whatsoever. Even though he had been shivering violently when walking the few hundred yards here, his shirt was replaceable. The dozen or so bespoke suit jackets he owned definitely were not. Without him wearing a suit jacket, an un-keen eye would easily mistake him for a humble businessman drowning the horrors of his working week in a considerable percentage of ethanol. Come to think of it, they wouldn’t be very wrong with that observation.

It had all started with Iraq, of course it had. He had thought he could handle the responsibility of taking two candidate agents with him on a mission, and he indeed could. That was, up until the exact moment he had overlooked that bloody grenade. Harry had been absolutely positive that Lee Unwin had been capable of earning the title of Agent Lancelot. His heroic sacrifice only further proved that, shame that they couldn’t give him that title since well, he had sacrificed himself, leaving behind a wife and child.

Sunken deep into his thoughts, he only noticed the presence of the copper haired lady sitting beside him at the bar when she had shifted her bar stool to sit mere feet away from him.

He looked up, saw his pitiful, flushed reflection in the mirror across from him and hastily averted his glance to look at her. She looked very out of place in the crowded pub, her clothing was as casual as could be but it looked inexplicably wrong on her. What set her apart from the other strangers mostly was that she looked at him directly with a seemingly concerned expression, whereas the others respected his anonymity by not even so much as casting a glance in his general direction. She seemed to be in her late thirties, and her features had an ever so slight tinge of familiarity.

“Good afternoon,” he slurred, and almost physically recoiled at his own lack of proper articulation. He felt an additional rush of blood spread throughout his cheeks, he was certain he had to look absolutely enchanting by now.

“Good evening,” she corrected him with a quick look at her watch, her accent definitely not matching the sweatshirt she was wearing. “It’s… quite a few hours after six. So, good evening.”

“I have a feeling you were trying to draw my attention,” he continued. “It’s not every day I see a lady like you in a place like this.”

“It’s not every day I see a man in a fitted shirt looking this out of sorts,” she retorted, earning a nod from Harry.

“We can agree that we both are rather out of place here then,” he said. She only smiled faintly, leaned forward.

“Tell me,” she said on a lower tone, the concern in her glance becoming more apparent, “What does a man like you do in a pub like this on an hour like this?”

Harry shifted in his seat, feeling uncomfortable with a personal question like that coming from a stranger. He didn’t like to discuss his personal life whatsoever, even the periodical psychological evaluations at Kingsman were highly unpleasant to him, especially in the past month.

 _Oh, get yourself together, Hart_ , he thought to himself, _she probably didn’t even mean it personally, no one’s out to get you_.

“I do not like to drink alone,” he replied, not very truthfully. His reply only caused her to shake her head.

“You do not look like a man who enjoys drinking in the company of strangers either, though.”

“You shouldn’t make presumptions based on someone’s appearance that easily,” he remarked with an embittered, angry tone in his voice, and as soon as he noticed other people actually looking up from their conversation he realised he had raised his voice considerably. He immediately regretted lashing out like that.

“Very well,” she said, leaning back again, her expression turning into a somewhat cold stare, and she turned away from him.

He averted his eyes. He wanted to apologise to her, properly introduce himself and truthfully answer her question, because _oh god_ , that was the least respectful encounter he had had with a stranger outside of a mission in a long while.

No matter how much he struggled to phrase an apology, the words did not form in his throat, so he just kept staring at the puddles of beer on the wooden planks of the counter, struggling against the daze that accompanied the alcohol. When he looked up, she had disappeared, and so had all of his motivation to linger in the pub. He paid for his drinks, earning another amused glance from the bartender.

“Didn’t take well to the drinks this time, now did you?” he asked after pocketing the money, while tapping a beer for another customer.

Harry only gave a curt nod and raised to his somewhat wobbly feet. “Maybe I should… I’m going home.”

The air outside was now a lot colder than earlier that night, he was shivering again as soon as he crossed the doorstep to the dark street. Maybe he should’ve brought a jacket anyway, he mused, maybe that way, he would’ve actually still looked like a gentleman, and he would have been continuously reminded to keep his manners.

Harry sighed as he closed his front door behind him, not feeling the expected relief of being alone once again, even though he had been yearning for solitude while he had been in the pub. He could feel his repressed thoughts lurking in the darkness of his house, circling him like predators would circle a wounded, bleeding animal. He heard the soft, repetitive notification sound from his work laptop that was in his living room, on the coffee table. Maybe it was just a message from another agent, or maybe… it was a notification for a briefing. A new mission. That would be the first mission he’d be sent on after Iraq. That realisation hit him harder than expected.

And right at that moment, the churning sensation in his chest started again, blood started pounding in his ears. The darkness of the room became distorted with white specks in his field of vision, like a blizzard had suddenly materialised in front of his eyes.

He had grown familiar with these… attacks over the last couple of weeks, yet every time it happened there were these few seconds of blind panic, where he swore that he knew he was having heart attack this time. It never was. Of course not.

He shuffled throughout his room, still engulfed in pitch black, lowered himself onto the couch, clutching his aching chest with a trembling hand, his breath becoming shallow and shaky.

A new mission meant a new responsibility, and oh god, what if he got another young agent to deal with, what if he got Lancelot to deal with? James Spencer had not been the more promising candidate out of the two trainees he’d brought to Iraq, and he wasn’t sure if he could mask the intensely negative feelings he held for the younger man if they were forced to cooperate on a mission.

He didn’t want another mission and he shouldn’t have lied when having his psychological evaluation taken earlier this month, this way it seemed like he’d coped with the backlash of his own incapability. His chest still ached, his lips and finger tips had gone numb. It was less than ideal to be experiencing this in the dark, it only contributed to his feeling of disorientation. If only he could get his fucking breathing to calm down so he could get up and finally switch on a light…

It took three more minutes of him leaning forward to recover, his head in his hands, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark and seeing the shadows cast on the floor by his furniture from the yellowish streetlights outside, flickering on and off whenever a car passed. The sound of blood rushing in his ears slowly abated, the pins-and-needles sensation disappeared from his fingertips and lips. Then he finally got to his feet, cautiously shuffled to the door and switched on the lights. His eyes had to adjust for a while, again. Only then he walked back to his couch, pushed his laptop to the edge of his coffee table and opened the two sliding locks to open the device.

‘Mission briefing at 1130 tomorrow @ HQ’, the short yet clear message read. Harry groaned softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had been right. As meagre of a consolation as it was, at least his… attack had not been completely irrational.

He had had three of these attacks in the past month, this one not included, and he had honestly no desire to tell about them during his psychological evaluation. Deep inside he knew that was only making matters worse, but it felt wrong to seek help when he was the sole cause of everything that happened. He had missed that grenade, and his inattentiveness had killed an aspiring Kingsman agent. The sheer thought of him having the audacity and egoism to ask for help for the emotional damage this incident had inflicted on _him_ was abhorrent. In a way, he was currently punishing himself for what happened, by not seeking help. In a way, his guilt was interfering with his work. In a way, he really, really needed help.

But there was no way of getting help on a Friday night which was rapidly turning into early, early Saturday morning, so he just settled back on his couch with a glass of good whisky and hoped the morning would come soon.

And it did. He woke up with his head leaning back on the headrest of the couch, and if it weren’t for the excruciating pain in his neck from this unnatural sleeping position, he would’ve complained about the dull headache that remained from the dehydration caused by his one too many glasses of wine and whisky last night.

He uttered a groan. Out of all least ideal ways to start an undoubtedly busy day, this just about topped the list.

He got dressed properly, tried and failing to mask the signs of his uncomfortable night’s rest in his tired face, and made his way to the mission briefing.

The fluorescent lights at the ceiling of Ops Command Centre were unforgiving to Harry’s weary eyes, and Merlin gave him a scrutinising look upon his entry, with some ill-masked disappointment, maybe judgment mixed in.

That look was gone from his face soon though, the Scotsman straightened his back and gave Harry a nod.

“Agent Galahad. Welcome, we were worried you wouldn’t make it since you’re normally always fifteen minutes early.”

Harry ignored this quip from Merlin’s end and looked around the room inconspicuously.

There were two other agents in the brightly illuminated room. No Arthur, so it couldn’t possibly be a particularly important mission.

Lancelot was there. Of course he was. The younger man made eye contact with him and nodded, not a trace of guilt or exculpation in his features. Disgusting.

To his right was a lady with shoulder length copper hair who gave him a concerned faint smile and a nod. She looked familiar.

And Harry then realised she had looked familiar the last time he’d seen her, as well. He had seen her in the pub, last night. That’s why she had seemed familiar, he hadn’t recognised her in clothes that were beyond casual, but now, with her wearing the standard Kingsman work attire, bespectacled, and her hair down, he recognised her as Veronica Overton, or agent Lanval. The previous agent Lanval had been killed in action shortly after he had obtained the title of agent Galahad, and he remembered her not exactly being the most promising candidate. That had been a misjudgement from his end: almost twenty years later, she still maintained the title of agent Lanval.

He did not greet her, he just froze on the spot and averted his glance to Merlin, while a more intense version of that all too familiar feeling of guilt washed over him.

“So, what is the mission?” he heard himself ask with a voice that didn’t seem to belong to him. His face felt numb.

Merlin pursed his lips while maintaining eye contact, then turned around to the beam of the projector on the wall.

“Serbia and Montenegro,” he said, while pressing a button on the controller he held in his hand, and a corresponding map popped up on the wall. “More specifically, the regions surrounding Kosovo. I don’t suppose I have to enlighten any of you about the conflicts currently taking place there, as we have already sent agents on numerous missions there.”

He paused, looked at Lancelot. “Agent Lancelot. You have been in Serbia during your training, I recall?”

Lancelot nodded. “I have indeed. Back then the situation over there was already unstable, I can only assume it has worsened in the past months.”

“It has,” Merlin stated curtly. “We’re currently looking at some rather suspicious weapon trades in the area. We have lost all communication with one of our contacts over there, and we have reasons to assume he has participated in some trades in the conflict area. If so, this could potentially be disastrous.”

“It would suggest involvement of other countries in the conflict through supply of arms, even though this is not happening in reality,” Lancelot completed the quartermaster’s sentence, earning him a reluctant, somewhat irritated nod from Merlin.

The young agent was eager to prove himself, and interrupting Merlin was a mistake only an inexperienced agent would make. While the Scotsman was usually professional enough to not let any emotions interfere with his work as a quartermaster, he really did not like to be interrupted while briefing agents for a mission.

“There’s a warehouse near the border of Kosovo where weapons involved in past deals have been stored, and will probably be stored in the future,” Merlin continued, “We have reason to believe our former contact coordinated this. It’s our task to find proof for this entire ordeal, since it’s allegedly one of our contacts that went rogue, and we can’t risk his identity being known to other agencies. It’s sensitive matter, and we wouldn’t want any false accusations to be spread regarding it.”

Harry’s mind wandered off as Merlin started explicating the more intricate details of the mission, no matter how hard he struggled to concentrate.

Agent Lancelot.

He tried very, very hard to carry sympathetic feelings towards the young man, but his attempts were futile. It was as if the intensity of his feelings of guilt was being converted into anger, a white ball of pure fury whirling around in his chest. It hadn’t been Lancelot’s fault, that was for sure, but right now, Harry felt as if everything was Lancelot’s fault, and he wondered where this sudden bout of rage came from. Everything about the other agent was now agonisingly annoying, the subtle ways in which he non-verbally reacted to Merlin’s briefing, his cough, his _everything_. All his anger with himself was turned outward, towards the young agent, as if he was the one directly responsible for Lee Unwin’s death.

Harry was forced out of his hateful introspection by a sudden silence in the room, the large electronic screen buzzing in the background. Only after a few seconds, it dawned on him that he had been asked by Merlin if he had any questions regarding the mission.

He looked up, undoubtedly with a confounded expression, and gave a sullen nod.

Merlin’s glance lingered on him for just a moment too long, and Harry knew that the quartermaster could see that he had not been paying attention.

“Very well,” Merlin said after a moment that felt like an eternity, “The plane leaves in fifteen minutes, gear is already on it. This will be a fully documented mission, earpieces and glasses will be on for the duration of the entire mission.”

The three agents did not move immediately.

“You’re dismissed,” Merlin clarified, seemingly slightly irritated.

Agent Lancelot was the first to start walking towards the door, Merlin just about stared the two remaining agents down until they reluctantly left the room as well.

Harry knew why, this mission was bound to be a dirty, unpleasant one. Not that missions could be exactly pleasant, but all three of them would likely return home with a lot more blood on their hands than they previously had had. It was an errand that had to be ran, but nobody liked doing.

He felt the gaze of agent Lanval on his back as he was walking out of the briefing room.

He turned around, managed to distort his face into what he hoped could be interpreted as a friendly smile, anything to show her that he was normally not the unpleasant individual she had unfortunately encountered last night in the pub. “Good morning, agent Lanval.”

“Good morning, agent Galahad,” she repeated with cautious politeness. It was almost as if she feared receiving another quip from his end.

The thought of that made Harry stop in his tracks, turn around to face her properly and bow his head slightly. “I have to say… I want to offer you my apologies for the way I spoke to you last night. I was indeed out of sorts, I had had too much to drink, and my behaviour was unacceptable.”

“It’s quite alright, Galahad, I understand,” she said with a sight nod, yet the caution did not leave her eyes.

“That only leaves me to ask, what does a lady like you do in a pub like that?” Harry asked. “I think we both established we do not belong to the usual demographic there.”

“Quite right we don’t,” she said, averting her eyes, obviously avoiding his question, her body language screaming that she wanted to continue walking. “Have we ever cooperated on a mission before, by the by? I recall you being present at meetings, but I don’t think I have ever seen you in action.”

Harry furrowed his brow at her answer. She was being avoidant. He did not like that. If anything, it made him want to exercise the caution that he had previously witnessed with her.

“I don’t think we have,” he answered, walking on with agent Lanval hovering behind him hesitatingly, “I think we only briefly spoke after you had been promoted to agent status, I hope that explains why I didn’t recognise you last night.”

She nodded slowly, again ignoring the remark about her presence in the pub.

“Very well then,” she said nervously, “I look forward to cooperating with you on this mission, agent Galahad.”

“Much reciprocated, agent Lanval,” Harry replied, dazedly observing how she quickened her stride and paced past him, in a feigned hurry.


	2. Layers of Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter: descriptions of violence and, well, death

Lately, every waking moment whenever his mind’s eye wandered, Harry found himself remembering the look of utter panic and distress on the face of the young Michelle Unwin. It was as if it’d been etched into his mind, as if the intensity of her emotions had scarred his brain too, in some way.

By the way he remembered her reaction over and over again, by overanalysing her reaction to hearing the horrible news, he could have sworn she’d known it had been his fault, even though he hadn’t informed her of the matter. Her expression slowly changed from terror to accusation, from incredulous to spiteful.

It was as if she said it herself, repeating his own thoughts back at him. “Fucking missed it. How could you fucking miss it?”

Yes, indeed. How could he have fucking missed it?

Harry was startled from his episode of introspection by a bout of turbulence.

The plane the three agents were on was never going to touch down on Serbian ground. They were moving towards the opening back hatch of the plane, secured the earpieces into their ears and put on their glasses, strapped the parachutes to their back.

Harry, being the senior agent out of the three, gestured to the others, yelling to be somewhat audible in the raging gusts of air near the hatch’s opening. “Recording starts now.”

All three agents pressed a button on the remote control on their wrist and heard the three beeps in their earpiece to indicate they now had a live connection with each other and with Merlin.

Harry gestured to Lancelot. “You go first,” he yelled, “Remember, don’t open your parachute until we are below the radar horizon.”

Lancelot gave a firm nod, closed his helmet’s visor, saluted to Lanval and jumped out of the plane in one swift, resolute move.

Harry suppressed the strong urge to roll his eyes. Too eager to prove himself, again.

He then gestured to Lanval. The woman nodded, the expression of concern in her face stronger than ever, she was squinting against the afternoon sun’s glare in her visor. With one sudden leap, she, too, had jumped out of the plane.

Harry drew a deep breath, secured his visor. He took the leap.

Air, air, the sound of rushing air was akin to rushing blood in his ears. Even though his helmet was shielding his entire face against the pressure of the wind, he found himself squinting. He could barely make out the shapes of the two agents that were rapidly falling down, seconds below him. All the G-forces acting on his body did not make him feel good at all, the whirling feelings only emphasised the dark pit in his stomach.

As he fell down towards the earth at terminal velocity, he saw the jagged outline of the mountain range below him, and he estimated it would take him and the other agents approximately 8 more seconds to fall below the radar horizon.

They fell past the level of the tops of the mountains. Mere seconds until they reached the radar horizon. Lancelot had already reached it, judging from his pilot-chute that unfolded. Lanval followed rapidly.

Harry heard the alarm in his earpiece, pulled the chord unfolding his pilot-chute, and braced himself against the deceleration as his parachute inflated.

Seconds later all the agents were floating towards the ground at a considerably lower speed, and minutes later they had all set foot on Serbian ground safely. They discarded their helmets and light coloured parachutes, save for the smaller mini-chute each of them kept strapped to their back in case they had to jump from a lower distance. Agent Lancelot was in charge of any technical breaches they had to do, agent Lanval had a long distance rifle strapped to her back and Harry… Well, he had experience and a 10-round Tokarev TT-30. That same experience told him his equipment sufficed.

The base they had to infiltrate was situated behind the mountain range. They had all landed relatively close to the mountains, and they now had to work their way around them, guided from a distance by Merlin’s voice.

That proved to be quite the task. The distance was theoretically only two miles, but they were walking with heavy gear strapped to their backs, their mobility restricted by their bullet proof vests, and in ankle deep snow that hid the pits and tree roots underneath.

As they walked around the mountain, the sparse vegetation became thicker, the pine trees growing closer together, loose tree roots now hidden everywhere underneath the loose snow, waiting to sprain an inattentive agent’s ankle.

Then, rather suddenly in their multi-hour journey, the pine forest ended abruptly to reveal a widespread field, with a very angular, concrete building right in the middle.

The three agents gathered behind the treeline, taking cover behind the tree trunks.

“The satellite images didn’t show half a forest being cut down,” Lanval said disapprovingly as she took the casing with the sniper rifle from her back and started assembling it mechanically, her controlled and fast movements deeply imbedded in her muscle memory.

 _“We receive detailed satellite images every few days,”_ Merlin said in their earpieces, _“I doubt they could’ve cut down an acre of 20 feet tall pine trees in three days.”_

“They couldn’t have,” Harry said decidedly, “We’ve been receiving forged satellite images. Look at the warehouse building.” He pointed to the concrete building.

“It was just a single square building on the most recent image,” Lanval said, attaching a silencer to the rifle, “They’ve done some… major home improvement in what was supposedly two days.”

 That actually elicited a chuckle from Harry, which was rapidly punished by a sharp sting of neck pain, which caused him to return to professionally furrowing his brow.

Lancelot gazed at the building through a pair of binoculars. “Two guards out front, two on the roof of the front part of the building. Front door is hermetically sealed, of course.” He grimaced, lowering the binoculars from his eyes. “This is going to be quite the bloodbath.”

“Do you think you have enough experience to judge that?”

Harry pursed his lips together and squeezed his eyes shut. It took a few seconds to realise he had not been the one that had spoken up.

He looked at agent Lanval, who had crouched down and was aiming her rifle to the guards stationed at the door.

“Excuse me?” Lancelot uttered indignantly, with a look at the lady, who did not look up from her scope.

Harry repressed the urge to smile, and once again resorted to his professional frown, drew his pistol from its holster and drew a couple of deep breaths of ice cold air to focus his mind. The next couple of moments were going to be dangerous, and crucial.

“Clearance requested to move in,” he said. “Everyone ready?”

The two others nodded.

 _“Granted,”_ he heard Merlin speak through the earpiece.

Lanval fired.

One of the guards at the entrance fell down.

Lanval fired again.

The guard on the roof staggered, then lost his balance and toppled over the edge of the roof.

Lanval fired a third time.

The last guard at the entrance, who had tried to open the gate in order to flee to safety, stumbled, tried to walk on and collapsed. He continued to slowly drag himself to the gate.

“Moving in,” Harry yelled to the two others, louder than he had intended to do, slightly deafened by the shots from the sniper rifle. Even though the rifle had been silenced, the shots were still inconceivably loud in the world muffled by snow.

The three agents ran towards the entrance in a slightly crouched position, snow crunching underneath their feet. They were completely out in the open now, with no possibility to find cover until they reached the warehouse. Any misjudgement of the situation and they were sitting ducks.

“Two out of three shots were good, Lanval,” Lancelot said to the older agent while they ran to the entrance.

Harry frowned, wanted to reply in a less than friendly manner, but he wisely chose to save his breath to run towards the warehouse. Lanval could take care of Lancelot herself, if she so desired.

The guard on the left was indeed dead, very much so. He had collapsed on top of his AK-47, bleeding out in a crimson spot onto the snow. They did not even need to check on the guard that had fallen from the roof.

The guard on the right was still alive, the bullet had hit him in his thigh, which was bleeding, but not gushing with blood. He screamed and pleaded for his life in Serbian.

Lancelot talked to him, undoubtedly asking how to open the warehouse’s door. The guard seemingly replied with an “I don’t know”, and Lancelot planted his heel in the bullet entry wound on his thigh. It earned him another blood curdling scream and some quick instructions.

The young agent dragged the guard to his feet and pressed his hand against the biometric lock that had thus far denied the agents access to the warehouse.

The door opened, and revealed the inside of the warehouse. There were stacks of wooden pallets organised in ailes, loaded with a variety of different objects as far as their eyes could see. The ceiling was very high, and dimly lit by rows of yellowish, old bulbs, some of them flickering, which caused the majority of the warehouse to be hardly visible, like it was shrouded in a murk, which made the space seem even larger. There were a couple of staircases at the sides of the interior, and a larger one at the very back which undoubtedly lead to an office of sorts, judging by the door on top of them and the row of windows on either side of the door.

It wasn’t quiet. There were speakers mounted in the room, and music was being played at a volume just loud enough to echo eerily throughout the room, but soft enough for Harry to not to be able to discern it.

Lancelot pushed the wailing, limping guard with him as they walked on, Tokarev pressed to the back of his neck. The guard tried to bargain with the agent in Serbian, but his desperate supplications were only answered with a very gruff “drži usta zatvorena, jebote” from Lancelot.

There were footsteps, other than their own, behind pallets, in other aisles, echoing throughout the room as syncope beats to the reverb of the music. They seemed to follow them, stopping whenever they stopped. It made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand. The others did not seem to notice it.

“Ask him how many guards are back there,” Harry said to Lancelot as they all pressed their backs to a high stack of suspicious plastic-wrapped pallets. The other footsteps stopped again.

_Plastic, everything in this godforsaken warehouse smells like plastic._

Lancelot translated the question into Serbian, rephrasing it a couple of times as the guard did not seem to understand him right away, or pretended to not understand him right away. He aggressively pushed the gun against the guard’s throat and mumbled something incomprehensible. The guard’s eyes widened and he stammered something that sounded like “ne znam”.

“He insists he doesn’t know,” Lancelot translated.

Harry frowned. “We’ve taken down only three so far. There must be a couple of them left.”

Lanval glanced around the pallets. “The stairs to the office are at the end of this aisle. We can try to push through.”

“Alright buddy, you know what that means,” Lancelot said, grabbing the guard by his collar again and pushing him out into the aisle. The guard protested, but more silently than before, hobbling along with the occasional painful sob.

 “A couple of hundred feet to the stairs. Let’s just get the documentation and leave,” he said, turning back to the others, “I don’t want more blood on my hands than I already have.”

“Don’t we all,” Harry grunted as he followed closely behind Lancelot. This entire method of infiltration was far too crude for his liking, they could have definitely entered the warehouse without killing a single man.

Lancelot slowly walked down the main aisle with the guard in front of him, Harry and Lanval had split up from him and were carefully clearing each perpendicular aisle as they inched closer and closer to the stairwell to the office.

 The guard kept repeating the same phrase over and over again, he seemed more desperate the higher they ascended on the stairs and the closer they got to the door. Lancelot prepared to kick in the door.

“How did you want to clear that room?” Lanval hissed.

Lancelot only gave her a blank stare, pointed to the guard and kicked against the old, wooden double doors, which dramatically fell out of their hinges, pushing the guard in front of him like a human shield.

 Harry and Lanval stood just out of reach of any possible crossfire that could emerge in the door opening… until Lancelot released the guard and gestured at the other two agents.

Harry hesitated, but Lancelot did not seem to assume any danger from whatever he saw in the office, so he glanced around the doorpost.

“Oh my god,” he said, more in utter confusion than in awe.

The inside of the office was a cacophony of colours and objects. The music that played throughout the warehouse was very audible here, it was undoubtedly trashy top 40 music, Harry thought with a scoff. There were loose pallets like the ones outside stacked randomly and scattered around the floor, leaning against the walls, on top of the office furniture. The plastic had been torn off, sometimes only partially, revealing the cargo they carried: fur coats, some designer sportswear, shoes, and loads of different weapons, mostly AK-47s. There was barely any room to walk, even the fire exit stairs at the back of the office were covered in various packages.

A man was sitting on top of the office desk, dressed in nothing but a fox fur coat, a pair of black army boots and fluorescently printed swimming shorts, a silver crucifix dangled low on his hollow chest and his brown, greasy hair slicked back.

If he felt any surprise at the Kingsman agents entering his office, he knew how to mask it with expertise. He practically ignored the crowd infiltrating his office with drawn weapons while he spoke to the guard in Serbian. He sounded friendly, his words spoken smoothly, but the guard replied with such utter panic in his voice that the contents of the other man’s sentences could easily be guessed. The guard had inched closer to him, his body language being apologetic, even though the other seemed calm, almost consoling him.

Out of nowhere, the man pulled a pistol from a holster underneath his fur coat and shot the guard through the chest twice, before Harry and Lancelot could aim their guns, which had been lowered in inattention. The guard uttered a scream that rapidly evolved into a gurgle, fell to his knees and collapsed, forming a fast growing puddle of crimson blood on the carpeted floor and staining the light fur of a mink coat that lay beside him.

The man pointed his gun at Harry, and Harry was surprised to find himself staring at the wrong end of a Tokarev TT-30.

“Hello, Galahad,” the man said, with only the slightest hint of a Slavic accent.

“Drop it,” Lancelot said, gun aimed steadily, but Harry just raised his hand to silence him, he had already recognised the man.

He saw his wide-eyed reflection in mirroring aviators, at the barrel of the pistol, and the tsunami of incapability washed over him.

He had missed it. He had missed the fucking gun. Again.

But then… he had not expected to be met by a gun wielded almost exclusively by his colleagues.

“Ivancevic,” he replied, not even greeting, just stating the obvious.

Ivancevic lowered the gun, revealing a wide, crooked grin. “Welcome, my dear friends, please make yourselves at home!” With his pistol still in his hand, he patted the back of a chair next to him, which was almost completely covered in plastic-wrapped or partially unwrapped sweatpants of a variety of different brands.

It was a less than comforting welcome, hence none of the Kingsman agents obliged.

Lancelot, completely unaware of the tension in the room, shot Harry a puzzled look. “Who… you two happen to be acquainted?”

Harry never broke aggressive eye contact with Ivancevic. “Milorad Ivancevic. Our trusted contact during the breakup of Yugoslavia. As you can see, we’re have all reason to terminate that trust.”

“God, Galahad, you’re breaking my heart,” Ivancevic said with a melodramatic sigh and a theatrical gesture to his heart. “We are friends, right?”

When ignored, his glance trailed away from Harry’s eyes and to agent Lanval. He whistled between his teeth.

“Oh, bože, the years have not been kind to you, have they, Lanval?”

Lanval, who stubbornly pointed her loaded sniper rifle at him from her shoulder, simply shrugged at the attempted insult based on the very noticeable wrinkles in her complexion. “At least I maintained my sense of style and decency, which is more than I can say for you.”

Ivancevic gave a depreciating chuckle and averted his glance from her, spreading his arms to reveal his unsightly outfit and gangly body once more. “I am simply displaying my merchandise.”

“From what I recall, your position did not include selling any kind of merchandise,” Harry said bitterly.

“My position also did not include any kind of decent pay,” Ivancevic said as he slowly raised to his feet. “My position did include risks. I just desired the kind of money that I deserved for doing my job. It started with fur coats and expensive clothing, but the people in Kosovo surely do like Kalashnikovs, what kind of Serbian would I be if I wouldn’t help my brothers out?”

“Do you have any idea what kind of international turmoil you could cause if this became known?” Lanval said sharply. “Where did you even get the weapons?”

“I was stationed in Mali once,” Ivancevic grinned, “You people have trusted contacts, and so do I. There are multiple layers of trust involved in this game.”

“There is no trust involved from our side,” Harry said, tightening his grip around his pistol. “The only reason we didn’t kill you immediately is because you have been an incredibly valuable asset to us in the past, and we still had hope to bring you back in.”

Ivancevic lowered his aviators to the tip of his nose and glanced over them with a smile that seemed calm, tired almost. “Do I look like I am going to be brought back in?”

The two men aimed their identical guns simultaneously, without skipping a beat, Harry about to terminate their corrupt contact, and Ivancevic anticipating his colleague’s actions.

“Drop it.” This time Lanval pointed her rifle to the Serbian, Lancelot followed her example swiftly.

“Funny, isn’t it,” Ivancevic mused, ignoring the both of them. “You assume you can just infiltrate my store, kill me, and walk out like nothing happened.”

“You opted to kill your last guard, you sealed your own fate.” _Oh, shut up, Lancelot._

Ivancevic looked at the young agent, and gave a wicked smile. “Oh no, I did not.”

And as if prompted, the agents heard footsteps behind them, louder this time. These footsteps did not belong to one person, not even two.

All three of them looked back, and saw two dozen guards pour into the main aisle leading to the office.

“Fuck.” Lanval vocalised the internal monologue of all three agents.

Harry looked back at Ivancevic. Ivancevic had disappeared. The door at the very top of the fire exit slammed shut.

“Fuck,” he repeated.


	3. One hundred feet below

Eight to one with firearms involved wasn’t good news to anyone, not even Kingsman agents. They made the decision that any person capable of gauging the situation would, and that was following Ivancevic and seeking higher ground immediately.

Lancelot covered the other two agents while they rushed up the stairs towards the fire exit. Harry ran up the stairs, kicked the door on top open, and they were standing on the roof of the main concrete building now, the door emerged from what seemed an electricity shack.

Harry looked around, the ice cold wind cutting razors through his face, small flakes of snow forcing him to squint. No sign of Ivancevic. He walked onto the roof, his back to the shack, and the shuffling of feet was behind him.

Completely relying on muscle memory from his training, he turned around, swung his pistol into the momentum, but the shorter Ivancevic, who had crept up behind him, nimbly evaded his swing. Harry immediately swung his right leg into a roundhouse kick, which sent his opponent’s Tokarev flying over the edge of the roof. Ivancevic let out a cry of pain through clenched teeth, and the sound of cracking joints was heard from his hand.

Harry regained his balance, aimed his gun, and Ivancevic held up his hands and slowly showed rows of crooked teeth from behind a smirk.

“How about we settle this like gentlemen?” Ivancevic proposed with a malicious twinkle in his eyes.

Harry shook his head. “There is only one gentleman currently on this roof, I’m afraid.”

Was he though? Was he truly a gentleman? Would a gentleman leave his two colleagues alone to face two dozen guards? He frowned as he heard gunshots from the staircase.

“Then show me.” Ivancevic held up his fists to his face, preparing for a round of hand-to-hand combat.

Harry reluctantly discarded his weapon. It landed on the thin layer of snow on the roof with a muffled thud.

Ivancevic lunged at him, Harry easily evaded him and cracked his jaw with a powerful uppercut. A sound of cracking bones and the shattering of teeth. Of course, now Ivancevic drew a stiletto from underneath his fur coat and swung it at Harry’s face in an attempt to seriously harm him.

The knife cut through the fabric of Harry’s bulletproof jacket and he frowned, slightly disappointed by his own lack of reflex. Taking advantage of the other’s inattentiveness, Ivancevic swung his fist into unpleasant contact with his mouth.

That hurt. He spat out blood, stumbled backwards and glanced at the other.

“If you do not deem me worthy of being a gentleman, I will fight dirty,” Ivancevic concluded, only giving half a grin this time, his broken jaw would not open when he talked.

“I will not,” Harry said, though he didn’t want to admit to himself that he simply could not get close enough to Ivancevic to make use of the poisonous blade hidden in his shoe.

The gunshots from the narrow staircase leading to the roof were loud and in rapid succession. The guards had AK-47s. The two other agents only had semi-automatic pistols and a sniping rifle. Kingsman agents or not, they needed his assistance to be able to deal with this precarious situation.

“Then I see no other way than to bid you farewell, dear agent Galahad,” Ivancevic said. He saluted to Harry, then burst out into a full sprint, right off the edge of the roof.

“No, no, fuck!” Harry hurried to the edge, just in time to see the impact. Ivancevic lay on the concrete, almost one hundred feet below, his arms and legs at unnatural angles, blood had splattered from what once was his head in a halo-like pattern. “Fuck.”

Ivancevic had figured out they needed him alive, and his deranged brain had decided that the only solution to that was to kill himself by jumping off a 100 foot roof.

 Harry blinked, once, twice, shook his head to get rid of the sound of his thumping heart in his ears, then ran back to the staircase, where Lanval and Lancelot were actually doing a very decent job at keeping the guards at bay. Lancelot just threw a grenade down the stairwell, he undoubtedly snagged that from the unorganised arsenal of weapons in the office downstairs. The explosion sent shrapnel, guts and bits of concrete flying everywhere, which caused Harry to shield his eyes for a second.

Lanval, perched with her rifle at the very top of the staircase, just aggressively shot at whatever part of whatever guard was able to grant her a clean shot.

“Where’s Ivancevic?” she asked without looking up.

“He jumped.”

“Christ, we needed him alive,” Lanval said, taking another shot, which made the head of a tall guard disappear into a spray of red mist.  She uttered a guttural sigh as Lancelot, who was halfway down the stairwell now, started taking out guards individually by kicking kidneys and breaking necks. “Oh god, would you look at that. Lancelot, get back here, now is not a good time to try and prove yourself.”

Their attempts, no matter how skilled, were futile. The guards were closing in.

Lancelot, fortunately following Lanval’s directions, started making his way to the roof, while both Lanval and Harry covered him, bullets whistling around their heads.

“Get out,” Harry heard Merlin’s voice say in his earpiece. “Ivancevic is dead, you have no reason to stay. I’ll have you airlifted out of there in minutes.”

“Yes, let’s do as Merlin says,” Lancelot yelled with a glimpse of unbridled fear in his eyes.

Harry nodded at him as they ran to the edge of the roof. “Don’t forget to deploy your mini-chute. Ivancevic didn’t look like he enjoyed the drop very much.”

Lancelot rushed to the edge of the roof, pulled the cord at his waist and his chute inflated behind him as he jumped off the roof. He wouldn’t land as pleasantly as he would when jumping from a normal height, but the chute would break his fall enough for him to be able to make it to the helicopter Merlin would send in.

Harry and Lanval ran mere seconds behind each other, and in those few seconds time was dilated by the great number of events taking place in rapid succession.

One guard had made it to the roof and started firing at the two remaining agents.

Harry jumped off the roof while deploying his mini-chute, and saw how Lanval turned while jumping, fired one last shot from her Tokarev to lethally wound the guard.

She then pulled her cord, but she had lost too much time firing that last bullet, no matter how quick it had been. Her parachute did not inflate fully, and she fell faster than her scream could reach Harry’s ears. The chute had broken her fall, but not… enough.

Lancelot turned around, saw the scene and cursed. “Merlin, get that airlift here right away. Lanval is injured.”

 _“Other than my name suggests, I cannot actually conjure up a helicopter out of thin air,”_ Merlin replied in their earpieces. _“Lanval. Are you able to speak?”_

Harry discarded his chute and knelt next to Lanval, who was breathing shallowly, her eyes wide and fluttering open and closed.

“Leave me here.” She seemed out of breath, all colour drained from her face.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lanval,” Harry muttered, stabilising her head, feeling an agitated but steady pulse. “The airlift is minutes away. We’re not leaving you.”

Lancelot cautiously patrolled the small area around them, looking around the corners of the building, making sure to catch any guards before they caught him.

_“Two minutes. We’re getting you out of there. Get her to calm down.”_

“I can’t feel my legs… I think I’m dying,” Lanval said, with an ever so slightly panicked voice, “Everything went so well, and now I’m-”

“Lanval, _shut up_ ,” Harry shouted to the other agent in a sudden burst of frustration. “Remember your training, for God’s sake. This is no time to apply for martyrdom.”

_“Easy there, Galahad. She’s in shock.”_

Harry wanted to say everyone’s training prepared them for managing symptoms of acute stress reactions, but the look on Lanval’s face interrupted his thoughts.

“You’re not dying,” he hissed again, “You probably have a spinal injury, but you’re not dying.”

“If I don’t survive this-” she began.

“You will survive this,” he interrupted her angrily. He would _make_ her survive this single-handedly, he could not bear the thought of losing another colleague, if she died, that would be his fault as well.

Blood on his hands. He did not mind the blood of innocent guards on his hands as much as he minded the blood of other agents, whether they were young and not even officially promoted like Lee Unwin, or were seasoned Kingsman veterans like Lanval. He had Unwin’s blood on his hands, he didn’t need her blood on his hands as well.

_“One minute.”_

Lancelot fired a couple of shots around the corner of the building. “Make that thirty seconds, I don’t know how many more of them are going to arrive.”

“Harry, please,” Lanval pleaded.

“Agent Lanval, don’t do this,” Harry said, not liking her sudden change in tone and the fact she had addressed him by his first name.

“I need you to know that I-”

“The airlift will arrive in less than a minute as you heard,” he interrupted her again, desperate not to hear the rest of her sentence. The woman seriously believed she was dying, and he did not want to hear whatever confession she was going to make, he had a vague idea in what direction she was going. He was not a pastor, he did not need to hear anyone’s deathbed confessions, he had enough guilt as is, however selfish that sounded. He had to exercise a bit of self-preservation to keep himself afloat in this sea of bullets and panic and guilt.

The airlift indeed arrived in less than a minute, and a reasonably disgruntled but reasonably alive agent Lanval was secured onto a backboard while Lancelot covered their backs while entering the helicopter.

 _For now, I escaped a fresh coating of blood on my hands,_ Harry thought as they took off from the ground, bullets bouncing off of the helicopter’s exterior. _For now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god I actually felt bad killing Ivancevic, I actually started to like this deranged idiot but that's what you get when your OCs are naught but plot devices lmao


End file.
